


By My Side, When I Fall Asleep

by phosphorous



Series: Haikyuu One-shot Collection | Multiple Universes [4]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Best Friends to Lovers, Bookstore Owner!Iwaizumi Hajime, Childhood Best Friends!Iwaoi, Figure Skater!Oikawa Tooru, Gen, Geographical Inaccuracies, Long Distance Relationship, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Set In a Touristy Island, Somewhat, alternate universe - figure skating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:28:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22770106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phosphorous/pseuds/phosphorous
Summary: Photo: Five time World Champion, Oikawa Tooru (27) from Japan, after announcing that he has no plans of returning to professional skating after ground-breaking performance at this year’s Grand Prix.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Series: Haikyuu One-shot Collection | Multiple Universes [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1579000
Comments: 4
Kudos: 112





	By My Side, When I Fall Asleep

**Grey**

(On the ice, there was a boy. 

He’d only landed two out of the sixteen jumps he’d attempted so far, which, in hindsight, probably meant that he’s not very good at skating. He kept skidding against the ice, stumbling every three steps, slipping and sliding when he fell on his face and his elbows refused to hold him up. The tips of his fingers were blue, his entire face as white as the first snow, and the places where his skin had taken hits were starting to turn purple. Several meters apart, the boy’s glasses laid twisted and broken, shattered lenses mixed with the scraps that flew when his skates cut through the ice. The harsh light filtering from the window did not deter him. Neither did the blood dripping steadily from the cut on his palm.

“Call it a day,” his coach had advised him, and the undercurrent of disappointment and boredom in her voice had been obvious. She was a cold woman. Cigarette lodged between her teeth despite being the coach of an up-and-coming athlete, her eyes lined heavily with eyeliner, her false red lips always pulled down in a condescending snarl. She almost never paid attention to the boy, and on the rare occasion that she did, she never praised him, but she loved nitpicking at his flaws. “Go home. You’re not going to make any progress like this.”

And the boy had waited on the ice, his bleeding palm clenched into a fist, until the sound of her footsteps no longer bounced off the walls like the echoing of a gavel after a trial. Then he’d breathed in, shaking like the air could no longer fit into the crevices of his airways, and he’d attempted the jump again.

He always had his eyes closed when he did, like he’d rather not see if he’d fly or fall.) 

**Red**

Save for his personal belongings, the shiny medals and fancy awards, his lucky skates and the potted plant called Sir Norman, nothing else goes back to Japan with him. 

He leaves it all behind. The newspaper clippings of his success stories go in the trash, exactly where they’ve belonged since day one, and the oddly shaped antique vase he’d bought after caving into peer pressure from Hanamaki goes for sale online, along with his car and the apartment he’s lived in for most of his life. He returns the broom he’d borrowed from the next door neighbor three years ago (she got teary eyed when he told her he was moving for good, and that he wouldn’t be coming back again) and ties up all the loose ends he has with his coach and his other colleagues, and then leaves, and doesn’t look back.

Most of his competitors call to see how he’s doing, which is funny, because he really doesn’t know why everyone’s acting like he’s utterly crushed by the weight of his own decisions. He doesn’t  _ want  _ to skate anymore, and underneath all the fake sympathy and the outright lies, he thinks they all know.

It doesn’t hurt. He expects it to ache a little, when he hands his keys over to the landlord and turns his back on the place he’d called home for  _ years _ , but it never comes. Watching the streets melt into one another, the buildings blurring into the sky, the lights stark and bright -- it doesn’t dig into his heart like blunt shrapnels, it doesn’t feel like there are a set of claws through his heart. It feels, strangely, like the cuffs around his arms are slowly slipping away, and with every step he takes away from the city he lived in, he feels free.

_ It’ll be okay _ , he tells himself, and a few flights and three taxis later, he’s standing outside the boat that’ll take him back home. He’s holding a Sir Norman-sized package in his hand, his suitcase by his arm, and there are cameras pointed at him as he’s waiting for the boat.  _ You’ll be home soon _ .

He closes his eyes, and not unlike how he does when he’s standing at the edge of the ice mere seconds before he has a routine to perform, he breathes in, breathes out, and he allows himself to hope for the best. 

____

_ Photo: Five time World Champion, Oikawa Tooru (27) from Japan, after announcing that he has no plans of returning to professional skating after ground-breaking performance at this year’s Grand Prix. _

____

Lesser known fact about Tooru: he’s from a small, touristy island several miles to the west of Ishigaki, famous for its quaint, calm atmosphere and the coastal land features, and its regional seafood noodles. 

As a kid, his fondest memories include begging his aunt to take him to see the sea immediately after school, or running along the beach with his classmates during school trips, trying to avoid being caught by them while simultaneously dodging the waves. Everything always smelled like sea salt. He’d wake up every Sunday to the sound of fish sizzling on a cast iron pan. On weekends, if he’d done his homework and he’d worked hard at the rink, his aunt would let him go fishing with a grumbly, visibly irritated Iwa-chan and his kind stepfather. 

He’d moved to Tokyo at twelve, because the hometown rink could only do so much for him. His aunt had taken him to the city, made him promise that he’d eat his vegetables and listen to the family he was staying with, told him to be brave regardless of whatever happened, and then left him there. She called every night because she couldn’t sleep unless she knew he was well, (she still does), and that had been that. 

The last time he’d come home had been around January, when he was twenty four. He’d stayed for three days, slept more than he did in a year within one, helped his aunt with the inn on the second, holed himself up in Iwa-chan’s bookstore and read a sad novel until he’d been sniffling and poor Kindaichi brought him tissues from the backroom in the third, and on the fourth, bid everyone goodbye and gone back to Japan for a press-con. He hadn’t been back since.

It’s late in the evening by the time the boat docks. The first rays of the sun are beginning to disappear from the sky. It’s like a dome of fire in a purple blue background, and the sea is glittering like a handful of diamonds had been tossed into it. 

“Have a good day, young man,” the auntie next to him says. She used to yell at him for riding his bike too fast, blind as a bat on bad days, always telling him she’d tell his aunt to keep him on a leash if he was misbehaving all the time, but he doubts she even remembers him anymore. “You’ve been wonderful company these few hours.”

“Thank you, ma’am. You’ve been a delight as well.” He tells her, grinning cheekily, and carefully ducks his head when she reaches over to smack him. (It’s a thing here. Everyone does it.) When she’s leaving, he calls out, “I hope your grandson finds a wife soon! Good luck getting him to settle down!”

He waves at her until she disappears down the road along with the other passengers of the boat, some of whom give him a pat on the back and a kind smile. They all know him as his mother’s son around here, but some of the younger kids must know him from newspaper clippings or TVs. He smiles back at them and gets ready to leave, taking his suitcase and Sir Norman from where he’d let them rest on the ground.

“Hey!” It’s Iwa-chan, sitting on a bench by the grilled corn stall, and there’s a split second as the smile stretches across his lips where it feels like Tooru’s heart is about to pop out of his chest. He hadn’t known that Iwa-chan would pick him up. “You’re late!”

“The boat was late,” Tooru corrects, and hands him Sir Norman as soon as they’re close enough. Iwa-chan glows like a chunk of bronze tossed haphazardly into the sand when the rays from the sun flicker like a dying candle across his face. If the beach were a person, golden sand and liquid sunshine and shades of blue tossed into one, it would be him. 

Two children run past them, one of them screaming at the top of his little lungs as the other chases him with what seems to be a small, harmless crab. They’re laughing by the time they reach the newspaper kiosk.

It used to be him who used to be scared of crabs and Iwa-chan who used to chase him around with them because he thought it was funny to make Tooru squirm. Now they’re older, he’s tall enough to see over Iwa-chan’s head and Iwa-chan is broad enough to make the scenery behind him shrink and his shadow expand.

“You could have started by saying that you’re happy to see me,” Tooru says, for the lack of anything better to say.

“I’m always happy to see you, asshole, I thought I didn’t have to say it for you to know it,” is Iwa-chan’s noncommittal reply. Then he shrugs, shifting Sir Norman in his hands like he does with books when he’s nervous, and adds, “But for what it’s worth, I  _ am  _ happy to see you. I told you, I always am.”

It’s a stupid thought, but Tooru hopes that the seventeen years he’s spent skating don’t make his hands blistering cold when he reaches out to intertwine his fingers with Iwa-chan’s. Iwa-chan grins, one arm looped around Sir Norman and the other tucked into Tooru’s, and even though the sun has long since slipped past the horizon and disappeared, he burns brighter than all the lights Tooru has ever known.

“Cool,” Tooru says, the tips of his ears burning red, “Take me home, would you?”

It feels like taking a leap after gliding on the ice for ages. He keeps his eyes open this time. 

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: odasakusa


End file.
